Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Greetings and salutations, friends! Once again I, the Duke of DVD, arrive just in the nick of time to rescue you from your pathetic, stillborn lives by bringing you the finest in cinematic treasures. I arrive as a shadow, suddenly falling across you as you sit at your breakfast table, shoveling Krispy Kreme's into your gaping maw whilst you snort and giggle at Kathy Lee's Crypt Keeper-visage on the telly. You turn to see what is interrupting your reverie and see me, holding a copy of Rollergator. You loose a scream, spraying donut particles across your moldy trailer. A sudden acrid stench pervades the room, causing us both to recoil in horror, and we both know you have befouled yourself with fear.

Can you handle the offal that is Rollergator? I think not, for that is why I have watched it in your stead. Lumpen masses, I beseech thee: Do Not Watch This Film. Oh sure, you might read the description and think to your self, "Self, surely a movie starring Joe Estevez and featuring a rapping, purple alligator hunted by a skateboarding ninja couldn't be in the least bit bad!" and on one hand you'd be right. But on another, you would be making an error so grave that your mind would simply stop. Your spirit would leave your body, passing through the veil in a most dangerous and untimely fashion.

So pull up a chair, ease your pale bulk into it, and relax. You might feel a little pressure...Friends, I like to think I've seen it all, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Perhaps I've not watched everymidget porn movie out there, but if you've seen 100 you've seen them all, right? However, sometimes, something comes along that is so new it catches me off-guard, I feel the earth tilt alarmingly under my feet, and for a moment I slip into another dimension. Black lightning stabs upward at a steel-gray sky. Pigeons explode in tiny puffs of feathers as huge, nameless beasts bellow sonorously across the empty wastes. Then suddenly I am back in my own body, a look of pure revulsion sliding across my face.

Rollergator elicited this response.

"Easy-E ain't got nuthin' on me!"

A young girl, looking to be in her low 20's, relaxes on a beach. Nearby, a ninja watches silently. We don't know why, we don't want to know why. The girl sees the ninja, and then goes back to watching the ocean. Soon, she hears an annoyingly high-pitched voice calling from nearby. She goes to investigate and finds a purple, talking alligator about the size of a small dog.

You with me so far? Good.

Now, apparently near the beach is a carnival. The owner of the carnival is a Mr. Dennis (played in zombie-like fashion by Joe Estevez, younger brother of Martin Sheen, uncle to Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, and star of millions of films with such titles as Crimes of the Chupacabra and Vampire Blvd), but everyone calls him Uncle Chi Chi for reasons unknown (I'm going to guess it's his stage drag name).

Now, Uncle Chi Chi used to own thistalking, purple gator, but it's R-U-N-N-O-F-T and he doesn't know where it is. Thinking that he can make a fortune with it (rightly so, I say), he enlists the help of a skateboarding female ninja, a female karate instructor, and his very own nephew. You'd think with a crew like that, the gator would be returned in short order, but no, apparently this motley collection of people is just not that effective in capturing runaway talking gators.

Uncle Chi Chi sees what you did there.

Luckily for the gator, the blonde PJ finds him first. PJ, who likes to wear skimpy outfits, is kinda cute in that trailer-next-door kinda way, and wants to help the gator out. So, she stuffs him into a backpack and takes off on her roller blades. Roller blades are apparently a fetish of director Donald G. Jackson (last seen around these parts in the Vicar's consideration of Devil Master and its making-of doc Demon Lover Diary). In the early '90s he shat out a rollerblading trilogy, which I may well watch one day, or perhaps instead spend a busy day being anally raped by a gorilla. I'm thinking it would be a toss-up as to which would be more fun.

"What do you mean 'You'd look better as a purse'?"

PJ skates off to the carnival, for some reason, and walks around while Uncle Chi Chi and his nephew talk about stuff. Finally, the nephew goes for a walkabout and sees PJ stuffing french fries into the gator's mouth. He talks her into taking her to see Uncle Chi Chi, so off they go. The gator haggles with Uncle Chi Chi (I'm already fucking tired of typing that name out) over a contract. At this point, suicide seemed to be the easiest and fastest method for getting through this movie.

Nothing says "class" like the pockets hanging down from underneath your cut-offs.

Getting through this movie was no mean feat, folks. First and foremost on the "Reasons Why This Movie Sucked Donkey Cock" list is the music. Oh god, the MUSIC! Basically, the movie has one song for a soundtrack, an endlessly looping funky guitar tune that is playing WAY too fucking loudly, pretty much drowning out most of the dialogue. What little I could discern made me almost glad for the loud music. The problem is it just doesn't fucking stop, ever. By the halfway point I got up, walked into the kitchen in a catatonic state, and was moments from shoving ice picks into my ears before I stopped myself.

I made myself continue on. I do this for you, people! Who's your Jesus now!? WHO?!

Watch out! It's coming right for us!

PJ leaves with the gator, taking him back to her flat. What follows is a scene that had me questioning my sanity, humanity, sexuality, and also had me thinking self-immolation was a good idea. The gator does "impersonations." That's right, for fun and a laugh, PJ watches the gator go through a litany of pun-bathed impersonations that I'm not even going to quote here, because I care about you and also don't need to feel that huge of a disturbance in the Force when all of my loyal readers kill themselves.

"Skateboarding Ninja" would be a great band name.

The next day, I assume, PJ is out skating around, when they run into the skateboarding ninja, who makes a half-hearted attempt to grab the gator as she skates by. The gator lets us all know just how badass the ninja is: "She knows karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, chef boyardee, all kinds of stuff!" Having avoided the ninja, they then run into the karate instructor, who brandishes twin nunchucks at them. PJ begs the karate lady to listen to them, which she does, and they end up winning her over to their side.

Next we meet the"Swamp Farmer", a camouflaged, corpulent old man who apparently is the rightful owner of the gator, and has ventured out of the swamp to find him. The gator lets PJ know about the Swamp Farmer and so they set off...

I... uh, ok at this point I was as drunk as a lord due to how incredibly fucking awful this movie was. Basically, a new rollerblading girl shows up named Slingshot(I wish I was making this up, but I don't do nearlyenough heroin or crystal meth) who helps out by shooting the skateboarding ninja. The karate instructor lady shows up and there is an epic duel with the ninja, and by "epic" I mean shitty.

Marvel's Medusaand Big John Sack-for-a-Face square off in the world's largest steel cage match.

A fake backpack is used in a ruse, causing the ninja to make of with a bunch of celery and a cabbage instead of the gator. We get a scene where the gator raps. We have Uncle Chi Chi mumbling incoherently. Finally, the Swamp Farmer meets up with the girls and the gator out on some lone highway. The gator finally gets to go home, yeah!

Folks, make no mistake, this is a truly a bad movie. It does, however, have some redeeming qualities, and by "qualities" I mean "things you can laugh at." The gator himself is horribly voiced, and according to IMDB, voiced by Donald G. Jackson himself. The writing is laughably bad, the acting is shockingly awful, and the music... well, it drags this down from "so good it's bad" to just plain bad. Without the music, I would have enjoyed this movie, and actually I did enjoy it for a while until I realized that the same shitty song was going to be playing loudly the entire flick and thoughts turned to cutting my own throat with a box cutter.

I'm going to give this one a split score: Zero Thumbs Up for 99.99999% of the Earth's population, Three Thumbs Up for people whose idea of a fun afternoon is to sit around in their backyard and pound their nutsack/clitoris with a rubber mallet. This one is for cinematic masochists only, folks!

"Would you girls like to come back to the swamp and play "Sittin' On Grandpa's Lapbone" with me?"

And finally, just because I want to share in the misery, I present to you the rappin' gator scene, uploaded to yon Interwebs by someone who no doubt gets off on the anguish of others. Be sure and listen to the background music. Nice, right? Not too bad, really. Now, imagine that is the soundtrack to your LIFE! Imagine that music always playing, too loudly in fact, during your every waking moment. Such is the unique hell that is Rollergator.

I admire your willingness to step in front of the freight train that is "Rollergator" so that we might not take the brunt of the blow, but writing such an hilarious review makes me want to try it as well. Maybe being hit by a train's not so bad...maybe it's like a rollercoaster?

Being the Joe Estevez completist that I am I cannot believe it could be worse than "Beach Babes from Beyond," right? Right!?

@Jami - Once again you come to my rescue, fair maiden! The Hoff has eased my mind and given me much happiness.

@Samuel - It truly is hard to imagine someone spent all of $20 to make this film. (the $20 went solely to the rubber bands holding Joe Estevez's ponytail.

@Al Bruno - Equating my work to MST3K is about the highest form of compliment I've ever recieved, short of when the Pope told me the paternity tests came back negative and he was NOT my father. Thanks!

@Winship - In looking at Herr Estevez's list of works on IMDB, I can see he has lots of MAD movies, but if there is even one that is somehow WORSE than ROLLERGATOR... avoid at all costs.